


In This Big City

by cherrytruck



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types, Pocket Monsters: Black & White | Pokemon Black and White Versions
Genre: I made Clay talk as stereotypically as possible lol I'm sorry, M/M, Other, also there are so many inside jokes packed in this fic, fic that is way overdue I am so sorry, originshipping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-28
Updated: 2016-03-28
Packaged: 2018-05-29 13:51:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6378607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherrytruck/pseuds/cherrytruck
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wallace and Steven explore Unova before the big tournaments begin, adjusting to the new city life and also running into some troubles. This is a giveaway prize for pikachu203 - I am so sorry it took so long, no amount of good fic is worth this much wait but I hope you still find it amusing in any case.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In This Big City

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Pikachu203](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pikachu203/gifts).



“Well, here we are.”

Wallace was the first to step out of the plane, taking the stairs down as the wind of the new region blew across and welcomed him into this new land. It was night, completely out of sync with Hoenn’s timezone, but the sight before them were sparkles of lights coming from the cities that could be seen across where they had landed. Behind him, Steven followed onwards and looked at the cityscape ahead of them as he let out a gasp of awe.

“Amazing…so this is Unova. I see a lot of city more than natural landscapes…I hope that doesn’t mean there will be less stones for me to collect.”

Wallace rolled his eyes. “Steven, you know we’re not here for that.” Indeed not – they came here to partake in what was called the Pokemon World Tournament. They were both representing Hoenn in the champions category, a big event that bought together many trainers from all around the world. It was something Wallace had looked forward to for a long time, as there was nothing more he wanted than to show the whole world and every famous trainer the skills he was capable of, but it was also going to be quite the busy week and Wallace had hoped that he could spend the small amount of free time with Steven as well. “Won’t you prefer to spend the time we have here as a holiday together? I’m sure there is a lot to explore in Unova but it wouldn’t feel right without being next to the richest man in Hoenn. How would I afford anything without you?”

It was partly a joke – partly. Steven laughed. “Wallace, of course I’d rather be with you than digging in caves alone. I’m so glad they acknowledged the both of us as champions so we could be here together.” With that, Steven took Wallace’s hand, as they continued to absorb the sight of Unova for just a moment longer.

~

After having checked into their room and leaving all their luggage in there, as well as a night’s sleep with an attempt to beat the jetlag, Wallace and Steven wanted to explore Driftveil the first thing. Although Steven was practically drooling over the emeralds all over the city, Wallace was more interested in the strange drawbridge next to the city, which had an ethereal atmosphere to it as feathers flew down onto the bridge.

“Steven! Look!” Wallace ran into a spot where the shadow of a falling feather could be seen, and then he raised his arm to catch an odd little feather with a patch of purple on it. “Wow, I’ve never seen anything like this before!”

“Hmm…are these clean?” Steven stood there sheepishly on the spot, noticing a feather was slowly falling beside him – he caught it regardless.

“You worry about these beautiful feathers being safe but you’re completely all right getting your hands covered in dirt huh?” Wallace teased, running back towards Steven to take a look at his feather. “Ooh, yours is dark blue! I wonder where all these feathers come from…?”

There was a passerby also on the bridge, who seemed to notice the pair in their little feather game. “Those are Wings that you can give to your Pokemon to raise their stats. The purple one here is the Swift Wing and the blue is the Resist Wing. Sometimes the birds that soar above drop them – generous, huh? Aren’t birds wonderful!” She giggled, before she continued her way to whichever direction it was.

“Wings, huh?” Steven observed the feather. “Why do they call it a wing and not a feather?”

“Who knows – Unvoa speak, I guess? Hey, if these feathers are just falling down here like that and they can train our Pokemon, why don’t we try to grab as many as we can? Come on Steven, let’s run around and catch as many as we can before we remember we have something else to do!”

“O-oh, all right,” Steven said, as he followed Wallace and searched for a spot where he could find another silhouette of a feather on the ground. Just as it seemed like a feather was falling on Steven however, something else landed on his head.

“OH! Steven!”

“W-what?”

“There’s a duck on your head!”

“WHAT?” Both Steven and the little blue duck were caught by surprise and the duck seemed to want to engage in battle with him. “Uh…should we battle or just run?”

“It’s so cute!” Wallace took out a Pokeball, which luckily he packed plenty of for his journey here. “Steven, we do neither. We catch the duck.”

“I won’t question it,” Steven said as he tried to tidy up his hair, “but we’ve barely explored any of Unova and you’re already going to try and catch them all?”

“Not all of them, but you know I’m a sucker for little unappreciated water-type Pokes. I bet people probably don’t look at this little duck and thinks it has any potential, but you never know until you catch one, right?” Wallace let the ball roll towards the Ducklett until it was stopped by its feet. The blue avian animal suddenly didn’t look interested in pecking out Steven, and decided to let itself inside the ball.

“Congrats on your first catch,” Steven said. “You want to give the duck a nickname?”

“Sure,” Wallace said, picking up the ball. “I think I’ll call it Wing.”

~

Later on after Wallace had enough feathers to make ten pillows out of, Steven figured he should meet Clay, the man responsible for organizing the tournament they were taking part in – though Wallace thought in reality Steven just wanted to get friendly with him to see if he could convince him to hand over some of Driftveil’s emeralds.

After they navigated through this oddly complex maze of a gym, they finally met the gym leader himself. He was dressed in Sheriff-esque attire and looked like a no-nonsense kind of guy.

“So we finally meet, Clay,” Steven said in a professional manner, but Wallace knew it was just Steven’s way of trying to conceal his excitement for being surrounded by so many stones. “I’m Steven Stone, and this is my partner Wallace. We’re the champions from Hoenn.”

“Yer be the champions, eh? Well I’ll be! How d’ya like my gym? I’d just got work done on der place an’ it took me a ton of work! I heard yer and old man Joseph are big ol’ fans of stones and rocks alike huh!”

It took a second for both Wallace and Steven to understand Clay’s pronounced accent, but after processing it, Steven responded. “So you know my father as well!”

“Ahh yeah, small world here ain’t it! So yer here for a challenge or what? I know yer battlin’ in the tournament as a champ but that don’t stop ya from tryna collect all the gym badges, yer get me?”

“Hmm…sure, why not?” Steven accepted the challenge, but unfortunately given the type disadvantage, he lost to Clay.

“Never mind boy! Yer put up a good fight considerin’ yer up against ground typin’, but how about I give ya this instead of a badge since yer hardly be needin’ no badges in yer position? Here!” Clay handed him a glowing, smooth pebble of emerald into his hands.

“Oh my! This is the shiniest emerald I’ve seen!” Steven didn’t even seem fazed that he lost a battle – he clearly got what he came here for. “Hmm…it’s just as shiny as your hair, Wallace. Why don’t you hold onto it? It really suits you.”

Wallace took the stone with surprise. “But Steven! Don’t you want to add it to your collection?”

“Hey look,” Clay interrupted, “if yer gonna start bickerin’ in my gym how about I just give yer two of these stones so yer noise don’t give away the puzzle of the gym to these other kids who are tryna figure out the place!” Clay handed Steven another pebble in an attempt to get the two of them to move on.

~

Back on the surface, Steven and Wallace went into the Pokemon World Tournament building. Wallace managed to find Winona hanging around there, though he didn’t find anyone else from Hoenn for the time being.

“Oh, you’re not taking part as a gym leader then? I take it you think you’re better than the rest of us just because you got a cape, huh!”

“Hey, that’s not true! I just wanted to give Juan a chance to take part. I’d feel so bad if I didn’t let him take the opportunity to join us here in Unova. Plus they didn’t seem to have enough champions to make an even number anyway, so how convenient that Hoenn has two champions!”

Once the two were done talking, Wallace went to find Steven – who seemed to be starting some small talk with what seemed like other Unova locals, possibly. His eyes were sparkling up talking to the strange man in a white coat and blond hair with a gravity-defying streak of blue.

“Oh, I should be on my way, but it was nice talking to you!” The mysterious man left just as Wallace intended on joining the conversation.

“Who’s that?” Wallace asked.

“Oh, that guy called himself Colress…he was taking part in a test round tournament earlier on and I saw him with a Beldum so I got really excited to see another fan of steel! He’s a scientist from around here and it was so interesting to learn from him!”

Wallace chuckled. “Do you fancy him?”

“WHAT?” Steven stepped back. “Wallace, what the heck? What brought that on?”

“It’s just…so far you’ve been a bit shy with people in Unova but suddenly this guy really got you talking. I’m just kidding around, unless I hit a nerve there and you really are thinking of popping the question so you can get Unova citizenship later on.”

“WALLACE!” Steven didn’t look amused. “I wouldn’t ever pick a random stranger over you!”

“Even if he’s a Metagross match for you?” Wallace didn’t know why it was so funny to jokingly pair him up with this random scientist that the two of them barely knew – but Steven’s reactions were only encouraging him to make more.

~ 

As the day turned to evening, the pair from Hoenn had landed in Castelia City, a place that was congregated with so many people like they had never seen before.

“Oh my, I don’t remember any place in Hoenn being this busy at all,” Wallace said as the men in suits were trying to push past them in the street. “This place has so many tall buildings and offices, it’s crazy! I bet this is more than twice the population of the whole of Hoenn!”

“It sure is pretty crowded here,” Steven agreed as he also tried his best not to bump into anyone walking the opposite direction from them. “Hey, what’s that commotion over there?”

Steven pointed to a small ice-cream stand and Wallace looked on ahead. There was a long queue of people waiting. “Huh. Are they giving out free stuff or something? We should take a look!”

Wallace joined the end of the queue. He recognized the person in front of him – the same lady who he met at the Driftveil drawbridge.

“Oh! It’s you again.” She giggled. “Fancy meeting you here again!”

“Y-yeah!” Wallace nervously laughed back. “Uh…this is going to seem awkward but what is this queue even for? Is it free ice cream?”

“Still figuring out Unova, huh? That’s okay! This is where they sell the unique Castelia Cones. No, it’s not free but it’s really cheap. These cones always go out of stock because it’s way better than buying a full-heal, yet you and your Pokemon will find it much tastier than medication!”

“But isn’t the difference that you can store full heals while ice creams would melt in your bag?”

The girl blinked and stared blankly into space. “Huh. You know, you’d think.”

Wallace didn’t quite understand, but before he could question it, the queue moved on ahead just as the next batch of ice creams were ready, with people quickly placing money on the til and then taking their cones – some carrying as many as twelve, which seemed to be the limit per person.

When it was Wallace’s turn, he handed over his cash – and indeed, the signboard said that there was a maximum of 12 cones per person, per day. Wallace somehow managed to fit 12 cones into his hand. When it was Steven’s turn, he declined to take any.

“STEVEN! Why didn’t you take the cones?! We could have gotten 24 cones with one visit!”

“I uh…because, why do we need so many? I mean, I’m sure 12 is more than enough for us if you want to eat them with our Pokemon. We can buy as many full heals if you want later on.”

“Steven, that’s not the point! Did you not hear what the girl said? Well…never mind, I suppose it would be a pain to carry these all the way back to the hotel. Let’s come back here tomorrow!”

~

The next day, Wallace and Steven went into Nimbassa Gym seeing how Wallace had been recommended to go there seeing how his interests in beauty contests might be tickled by the theme of the gym.

As he walked into the suspiciously dark building, the lights suddenly came on and he was greeted by the sound exclaiming “ARE YOU READY?”, followed by some fancy music – it was just then that he realized he was on a catwalk.

“Whoa!” Even if Wallace had been used to being at the centre of the stage, this wasn’t quite what he expected. The lights then focussed onto the gym leader, Elesa. Wallace blushed a little from all the attention he was getting.

Steven decided to join the audience and prompted Wallace to go on ahead. “It’s your show from here, Wallace. Go show them what you’re made of!”

“Ah, you wish to watch me take to the stage? Very well!” Wallace transversed through the catwalk stage to approach Elesa.

“Champion Wallace. A pleasure to meet you two! Wallace, I know very well of your feats, both as a champion and a beauty contestant. I am a big fan of yours! Do you wish to accept my challenge?”

“A pleasure to meet you, Elesa. You know about about me? I-I’m flattered!” Wallace accepted the challenge, since he did come here out of curiosity and it would be polite thing to do to entertain Elesa with a challenge. He knew that she specialized in electric types, so he would be at a huge type disadvantage – what was with him and Steven specifically facing gym leaders they were disadvantaged to in Unova lately? – but it wasn’t like the badges were essential, and it was all done in good fun.

Elesa opened the battle with her Emolga, and Wallace with Luvdisc. Luvdisc was usually fast, but the Emolga beat him to the first move and used Volt Switch – which took out Luvdisc in one go and allowed Emolga to switch to another Pokemon.

“Argh, what a start…” Wallace chose Ludicolo as his next Pokemon, hoping that the half grass typing would let him take electric hits more. Elesa sent out yet another Emolga, which then moved first again and hit Ludicolo with an air slash – taking it down again.

“WHAT! You’ve got to be kidding me!” Wallace next summoned Tentracruel, who at least had some bulk even if he’d be hit with another Volt Switch – no surprise that he was, and Elesa yet again switched back to another Emolga. Tentracruel just barely clung on and hit the Emolga with an ice beam, though unfortunately it also lived on with a slight bit of health left. Wallace decided to throw in a full restore for the Tentracruel on this turn, but he knew what was next coming was another Volt Switch to the face so that he would have no opportunity to take out this low-health Emolga when it was next his turn.

The battle went on as a Volt Switch carousel, one that started getting old and made Wallace begin to hate that pseudo-Pikachu face on all these Emolgas, as much as he did like Elesa. Deciding enough as enough, he send out his trump card – Whiscash, whose ground typing meant that Volt Switch could no longer be used and the Emolgas would be trapped. It was annoying that they couldn’t be hit by earthquake, but nothing super effective could hit Whiscash either.

It was when Elesa was down to her last Pokemon, which for a fresh change was not an Emolga but a Zebstrika, something he could finally let Whiscash hit with an Earthquake and finish this battle.

When the battle had finished, Elesa clapped and set the screen to display pictures of Wallace’s face to celebrate his victory. “Congratulations! Not only are you a beauty figure to look up to, but a skilled battler to the point where even your water typing does not stop you from dazzling in the face of electricity! For this I reward you with the Bolt Badge – not that you’ll ever need it, but I hope you keep it as a memento of the battle we had!”

Wallace started blushing even further. “T-thank you, Elesa! Oh, this is too much…” Trying not to get too distracted by his own giant face behind him on the screen, he tried to look for Steven in the audience – as expected, he was standing up and cheering like a complete dork, in contrast to the usual professional impression he gave.

~

As the days passed by, Wallace and Steven headed to Humilau to meet the water gym leader of Unova. Wallace was particularly interested to meet Marlon as he was always interested in expanding his water network, but also one thing they shared in common was that they were both the 8th and final gym leaders of their region.

The inside of the gym was so lush, it almost made Wallace feel like his own gym was put to shame. Marlon’s gym was truly a water-themed place, with relaxing music and the bright clean water surrounding them with giant floating lily pads. Wallace decided that was it – he needed to do something in his gym to match up to this interior design.

“This is…really nice.” Steven seemed quite pleasantly surprised considering he was all around water rather than any land. He stepped onto a lily and then offered a hand to Wallace so that he could safely get on – well, not that it’d bother Wallace if he fell into the pool, in fact if he had bought his swimming gear he would have been quite happy to do so.

“Thank you.” Wallace held onto Steven as they floated to the next platform ahead of them. “Ah…see, isn’t this more fun than being stuck in a cave?”

“You don’t need to keep shaming my hobbies to remind me that all the fun is here with you,” Steven joked. When they had reached the other side, Steven continued to hold Wallace’s hand as he let him step up on the platform first.

The gym was so chilled out that Wallace ended up feeling more like he was in a holiday resort from riding on the lilies rather than preparing for a battle. But that may have proved not to be necessary when he saw Marlon dozing off in his own pool, sleeping on an inflated bed.

“Huh.” Steven crossed his arms. “He’s asleep?”

Wallace gave a shout out. “Uh…Marlon? Is the gym closed today or something?”

“Zzzzzz….mmhmm, oh!” Marlon opened his eyes and looked up towards the pair lazily. “Ahh…more challengers? Oh man…I just got beat by this other scary trainer who went all beaky with me and pecked on all my team! I need a rest and all that kind of stuff…shoots!”

“After losing one battle?” Wallace thought that if he acted this way as a gym leader then he’d sure get a telling off from Juan. “W-well, we don’t have to battle but…I figured it would be neat to meet another water gym leader.”

“Eh? Another? There’s only one water gym leader in this region, and that’s me!” Marlon stretched out, and it was then that it occurred to Wallace that he was dealing with someone who had no idea who he was.

“No, I mean…I’m a water gym leader too, from Hoenn. Well, now I’m champion, but…”

“Ahhh! Shoots! You’re a champion! Dude, why didn’t you tell me earlier!” Marlon jumped out of his floating bed and then swiftly swam across the pool towards Wallace, climbing out to greet him. “Pleased to meet you! Uh…what’s your name?”

“Wallace. It is a pleasure.” Wallace shook his hand. “So…how intense was this battle to the point where you’ve had to take this long break?”

“Ahh dude! It was tense! No time for me to even think, it was too fast and I was like huh? It wasn’t just the battle even! I thought these guys were gonna head to the league after being so hardball but they said what was more important was dealing with Team Plasma or something ‘cuz were up to no good or…something? I dunno man, they were so tensed up and I was like, telling them to chill a bit, because the ocean’s chill and the earth is made of 90% water! Or…was it 80% Uh…”

“Hold on…what?” Steven interrupted Marlon. “Team Plasma?” The two of them had heard whispers about them and figured they were the staple gang in Unova, but otherwise had never come across them thus far.

“Yeah! Hold up, what were they again…oh yeah! Something about how they’re up to bad or, something, but like, I like to stay out of conflict, you know? I dunno what they’re up to, they were insisting they stole Pokemon and want to take over Unova or something? But can you really truly take over the 89% water in this world? Life is so sweet when you’re oblivious to the remaining 20% of land! Don’t you agree, Wallace?”

“WHAT!!!!” The chill atmosphere of the gym was shaken by Wallace’s exclamation. “You heard all this about Team Plasma and you’re just…chilling here like this?!” Wallace turned over to Steven. “If this is true then we’ve got to do something! It’s not safe here! We shouldn’t sit back and do nothing!”

“Whoa man. I see why you chose to be champion rather than stay in the gym, you got no chill in you!”

“There’s no time to chill when there’s a threat! Marlon, when I came to visit here I thought it’d be nice to talk with someone who had shared interests, but I can see now there’s very little we have in common – when my home was in danger, I went out my way to help those who were trying to save it. Not sleeping in my own gym!”

“Huh. Well…” Marlon actually looked like he might have started to think.

“Marlon, please.” Steven joined in with Wallace. “We’ve just arrived here so we don’t know much about the situation, but if you’ve been told Unova is in danger then we urge you to find out more about this. I feel not only is it our duty as champions to deal with danger but also I am not interested in having Wallace stay in here if it’s not safe.”

“Hmmm…man, you now, I ain’t so chill about this. I’ve actually been kinda conflicted. That’s why I went to sleep, I just didn’t know what to do! Hmm! Oh man! I don’t even remember what it’s like to feel chill! Tell ya what, I’ll go find those trainers and see what’s going on, yeah?”

“Thank you, Marlon.” Wallace was slightly relieved, though he didn’t realize this visit to Unova would suddenly turn so awkward. How could nobody in Unova be aware of what this Team Plasma was up to?

~

Steven urged Wallace that they should rush back to their hotel room and potentially prepare to call off the tournament and leave if Unova was truly going to be under attack, although Wallace insisted that surely if all the world’s most famous trainers were gathered for the tournament, surely it was something they could handle. The issue was that Wallace and Steven and a few others were the only ones that had come early in advanced, and it didn’t seem like Unova had much control of the situation, which Wallace had recently heard was basically a Pokemon-kidnapping criminal gang with a giant floating ship hovering too fast for anyone to catch up to.

Before they could even reach their hotel room though, Driftveil was under attack – a bunch of uniformed thugs were assaulting the residents and tourists there, sending the scene into a chaotic mess. Among all the screaming, there seemed to be vague exclamations from the thugs saying how it was now the time for Team Plasma to take over and that soon the end would come.

“All hail Team Plasma! Bow down to your new leader Ghetsis!”

“Arghh! I didn’t realize we came to Unova at such an awkward time!” Determined to make sure nobody broke into their hotel room to snatch all their property, Wallace charged towards the hotel block where they were staying at. Several Plasma thugs blocked his way and sent out a horde of Pokemon to attack.

“You think you can stop us?! Try us if you can!”

“They can’t be any match for two champions,” Steven yelled, taking out his Metagross. Wallace summoned his Milotic, hoping that despite being outnumbered, they could take these guys out.

Steel bullets and waves of water surrounded the Plasma thugs that were in their way, and they managed to eventually clear a path to safely take refuge in their room. However, as Wallace was about to run in, he looked back and saw Winona struggling on her own, unfairly outnumbered by all these Zubats.

“Winona!” Wallace ran towards her and summoned Luvdisc, whom he commanded to use Hydro Pump to clear out all the bats trying to attack his friend. The coast was clear and Wallace managed to make contact with her. “Are you all right?! What happened?”

“I…I was just training around here and then suddenly these guys came out of nowhere and launched an attack here! Apparently they’re also planning to launch these attacks in the other towns! Forget me, are YOU all right?”

“Of course!” Wallace may have spoke too soon though, as more Plasma members were headed their way. They were completely surrounded, and their Pokemon had started to become tired after the unfair battles in terms of numbers, and the Pokemon centre wasn’t exactly accessible at this point. “Crap! What are we going to do?”

“Give it up, you’re outnumbered and you’re all out of PP!”

“Not so fast…I still have…one left!” Wallace threw his ball into the air to summon his last healthy Pokemon – it was his Ducklett.

“HA! Is that what you’re going to use to go up against us? Pathetic!”

It was true, Ducklett hadn’t been trained so much and it was hardly one of Wallace’s stronger Pokemons, but what was he to do? “Wing, use surf!”

The Ducklett was visibly distraught, but tried its best to protect Wallace – it sent a wave of water towards the surrounding Pokemon trying to attack it. While Ducklett managed to get good damage, it wasn’t enough to bring Plasma to a halt.

Just when Ducklett was about to be hit, Wallace seemed to have earned his karma as it was his turn to be saved – a big Togekiss flew by to knock out the thugs and an Excadrill marched on to shake the rest of the ground and clear the space. The thugs then fled when they realized they were no match against Wallace’s new saviours.

The Togekiss flew back to its trainer – it was the girl that Wallace last met at Castelia, and behind her was Clay. “You guys! What an awful time to meet…are you hurt?”

“Ugh, I know right?” Wallace straightened himself up once the danger had passed. “Thanks a bunch.”

“Well I’ll be damned!” Clay retained his constantly-angry looking expression. “These folks tryna pick on my city to attack all these guys and sabotage my gym AND my hotel business AND my tournament crew?! Ain’t got no time fer that! You folks oughtta take refuge since we took so long to finally escape the gym that these crooks were tryna cave in – we’ll take care of the rest!”

“Thank you so much,” Steven said. “I’m so sorry this is happening…is there something we can do help, or do you think we should evacuate?”

“Nahh. These ain’t the first time I’ve seen these plasma thugs, most of them ain’t improved their skills since I last dealt with them, they just think sendin’ a thousand flyin’ bats can outsmart us all, well not on my watch!” Clay sent out his Excadrill to continue ploughing through the rest of the town – suddenly Wallace was relieved to see that Clay had managed to raise such a frustratingly hard team to battle against.

“Go! We can handle this, please keep yourselves safe!” The girl with the Togekiss hopped into its back and then prompted it to fly.

“Come on guys,” Steven said, grabbing Wallace’s hand to run back to their hotel room.

~

Back in their room, Wallace and Steven agreed to let Winona stay with them just so they didn’t let her be all by herself in case something happened. She was sleeping in the other room on the couch however, while Wallace had taken refuge with Steven on the bed, huddled up against him.

“I’m really sad that our visit to Unova has turned into this.” Wallace sighed. “I thought the two of us could handle those guys but there were just so many of them that it was impossible! Augh!”

“We did what we could,” Steven said, petting Wallace’s hair. “And we really seemed to help before those other guys stepped in. It’s starting to sound quieter out there now, so I think they have the situation under control. It’s going to be all right…”

“I guess so. Still, I really wished we’d have fun in Unova rather than stress out about the tournament – I mean, I was excited for it, but is it even going to continue with the way things are?”

“We did have fun though. Flying with you, catching those feathers together, and how you caught your first Unova Pokemon, going through all the gyms, the cities…I had such a great time with you. Moments like that are more precious to me than finding stones in a cave. You must know that.”

“I guess…”

Steven leaned in to give Wallace a kiss. “I mean it.”

That managed to get a smile out of Wallace. “Thank you.”

Steven took out the pebbles and feathers he had held onto from their visits and laid them on the blanket in front of them to take a look. Wallace smiled and also took out his spoils, including the Bolt badge.

“See? I know these are small things but they will always remind me of how we explored this world together and the new things we discovered. Oh, before I forget…” Steven shifted out of bed to go grab his bag, taking out a few Castelia cones – somehow, by miracle, still fresh. “Feel like having some ice cream?”

“Ooooh!” Wallace’s mood lit up again when he saw the cones, and Steven immediately offered him one. Wallace began to consume the ice cream. “Oh wow…no wonder these are so popular. We’ve got to go buy 24 of them again!”

“We will, once all this mess has cleared up. That’s something to look forward to, isn’t it?”

“Thanks again, Steven.” Wallace pulled Steven back towards him, holding him close as they both ate ice cream together.

~

Team Plasma was finished, and things in Unova were finally back on track meaning that the Pokemon World Tournament was to go on ahead as planned. There was enough time for Wallace to eventually accumulate a monstrous 120 cones in his inventory, but on top of that, his team was ready to take on the tournament.

Steven had only managed to make it so far, losing out to Cynthia. Wallace was still in the game, glad that Hoenn at least had two people to represent it so that it was still in the game.

“Never mind, Steven. It was a good match but I guess Cynthia’s Garchomp really did a number against you. Ground types are just not your friend, are they? Or are you just upset that your boyfriend Colress got arrested?”

“Hmph. I’m going to ignore what you just said there. Cynthia is infamously fierce, so I’m content having graciously losing to her.” Steven smiled. “Good luck, Wallace. Whatever happens, remember that I still think you are the best.”

“I know.” Wallace said smugly, before going onto the stage and being cheered on.

Wallace wasn’t sure who his next opponent would be – but when the doors on the other side opened, he was taken by surprise.

“…I’ve been looking forward to this, Wallace.”

The challenger in front of him was the same girl he had met all over Unova. “You! Y-you’re a champion too?!”

“I’ve recently been crowded as the champion of Unova. Neat, huh?”

“Well. I’m glad we’re meeting again in such circumstances. Thanks again for all your help back there.”

“Likewise. Let’s go!” She summoned her Togekiss to the field, making a grand entrance to open the battle.

“Very well, prepared to be dazzled!” Wallace threw his Pokeball into the air and Wing – who had now evolved into a Swanna – took to the field to make an equally graceful opening.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> rip in peace wallace that Togekiss is going to trash your team


End file.
